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Magnetic bricks for digital playtimeIt’s like Lego – but magnetic. GaussBricks are magnetic bricks that let you build 3D shapes on the surface of your tablet computer that turn into digital drawings. Developed by Rong-Hao Liang at the National Taiwan University, the system uses a grid of magnetic field sensors, attached to the back of a tablet, to track the field around an arrangement of the bricks. An algorithm extracts the shape and converts it into digital form. GaussBricks will be presented in April at a human-computer interaction conference in Toronto, Canada.

“The blanket ban… is an unacceptable violation of the right to freedom of speech”An open letter signed by many leading authors, including Salman Rushdie and Günter Grass, has called on Turkey to end its ban on Twitter and YouTube

Like, virtuallyDo virtual reality and social media go together? Facebook thinks so. It has just bought Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift headset, for &dollar;2 billion. The headset has been hailed as the future of immersive video games but for Mark Zuckerberg, it is immersion in real-world events that’s the future. Describing Oculus Rift as a “communications platform”, Facebook’s CEO said that he wanted it to augment what the site already offers&colon; “Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”

Facebook for lazybonesWant to stay in touch with friends on Facebook but can’t be bothered to do it yourself? You need Conversational Agent for Social Promotion (CASP), software that monitors your social media feed and responds as if it is you. Created by Boris Galitsky, CASP makes relevant comments on photos posted by Facebook friends by analysing the text of status updates and then searching the web for responses. It was shown at the AAAI Spring Symposium at Stanford University last week.